But it wasn't always this way. This was anything but the case throughout the 20th century until the 1960s in the United States, England, and other Western countries. A 1954 New York City survey revealed that most children in city hospitals were allowed only two or three visits a week, an hour at a time. For children under five, this was devastating. One nurse explained the rational. "Visiting only upsets the children, and we can't have that." Parental visits had become associated with the young child's crying and screaming, particularly when the parents were getting ready to leave. Such visits were therefore discouraged because in their absence the child appeared to "settle in."
But research published in the 1950s and early 1960s demonstrated just the opposite. Parental visits didn't cause the child's unhappiness. They revealed the depths of the child's pent-up misery caused by the separation. According to researcher James Robertson (author of the 1962 book, "Hospitals and Children: A Parent's Eye View)," "At visiting times, the facade [of being content] broke through to show that the small child needed more contact with his parents, not less." Most of these hospitalized children, who were under age 5, had stays of about a week. At that time, parental visits were for the most part limited to 1/2 hour or 1 hour per day.
Here is a sample of comments mother's made about the experience. "Heartless," "ruthless," "cruelty," "absolute torture," "brutal unhappiness," "agony," "untold damage," "disgusting," "tragic," "heartbreaking," "horrible," "depressing," "utter misery." What follows are fuller observations from some of the mothers.
“We were still visiting about 30 minutes daily and the child, normally a happy, carefree, confident boy was becoming a nervous wreck. As soon as we appeared he would start clutching us, hanging on to us, beseeching us not to leave him, to take him home, etc., and when we left he looked wild and terrified.... His screams followed us the length of the corridor.”
“As we prepared to leave she would stand at the end of the bed, desperately trying to climb out... purple with rage and screaming with grief. We left her like that every day.”
She was delighted to come home with me, but would not let me leave her alone for a minute for some days, and only gradually allowed me to go out of the room for a short time. She would have outbursts of rage, tearing at our faces and screaming – quite senseless and violent and not always for any obvious reason. The most revealing thing I saw her do was to take her much-loved tiny doll out of its cradle, and quietly and with great concentration grind it to powder under the heel of her shoe.”
“The terrible fuss we had was unbelievable. He raged, shouted, threw things about, tore his books and repeatedly attacked me. The house was in a turmoil for three days and although he calmed down he only regained confidence in me after three or four months, and frequently asked me why I didn't visit him more often or accused me of letting him down."
"After only five days he came out a different child…. The day he was discharged – what a shock. Gone was the jolly laughing little boy I once had. Now he was kicking, screaming, and thoroughly uncontrollable.”
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